East Asia Archive

Japan and South Korea are mired in a heated military spat over an encounter at sea last month between a South Korean warship and a Japanese maritime patrol plane. Tokyo claims that its aircraft was threatened by the South Korean ship’s targeting radar for surface-to-air weapons, a charge that Seoul flatly denies. Instead, it accuses the Japanese military of provocatively flying its planes at low altitudes. The escalating feud is further straining an already tense bilateral relationship, as the two sides struggle to resolve difficult historical issues over Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea that have resurfaced in recent months. The […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the sudden escalation of Venezuela’s political crisis and the U.S. response to it. For the Report, Jonathan Gorvett talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about the roots of Sri Lanka’s recent constitutional crisis and why its resolution is likely to remain fragile and tenuous for the foreseeable future. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter […]

The government in the Democratic Republic of Congo cut internet and text message services across the country two days in a row last week, as tensions rose ahead of the release of official results from last month’s presidential election. It was just the latest move to restrict internet access by a state with a poor democratic track record, as more countries appear to take their digital cues from the likes of China and Russia. Last year, Thailand proposed a cybersecurity law that would give the government “sweeping powers” to surveil the internet, censor content and even seize computers “without judicial […]

Amid the ongoing U.S. government shutdown, soon to be the longest in American history, another recent lapse in funding has received far less attention but could be just as consequential. On Jan. 1, an important cost-sharing defense agreement, dictating how much money the South Korean government pays to support the U.S. military presence in the country, expired. No replacement text has been agreed to and negotiations are reportedly deadlocked due to President Donald Trump’s demands that Seoul shoulder a much larger portion of the stationing costs. The situation casts uncertainty on the future of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South […]

Mongolia has been rocked in recent months by a series of corruption scandals that have prompted large-scale demonstrations in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. The government of Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh has been paralyzed by revelations that senior government officials, including members of his Cabinet, misused funds that were intended to assist small and medium-sized enterprises. In an interview with WPR, Morris Rossabi, a professor of East Asian history at Columbia University, explains why corruption is so widespread in Mongolia and why the current wave of scandals comes at a particularly bad time for its economy. World Politics Review: Why is corruption […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. The impacts of a drastically warming climate are already being felt in Mongolia, where air temperatures have risen at three times the global rate since the 1940s. Average precipitation is declining and extreme weather disasters are more frequent, posing challenges for the country’s agriculture sector, which accounts for one-tenth of GDP and employs one-third of the labor force. In an interview with WPR, Tungalag Ulambayar, the research director of Saruul Khuduu Environmental Research & Consulting in Ulaanbaatar, discusses the threat that climate change poses […]